I don't know about 'overly hopeful'. As Ellul said, anarchism is only the 'first active step' towards a new beginning -- not a perfect beginning, not even a more advanced one, but a beginning that offers more freedom, more spontaneity, and more possibilities than is possible under the aegis of the state. This is no less utopian than the Marxist goal of a classless society, and more realistic insofar as it realizes the futility of compromise with the modern state.

As for intellectual tradition, it's a mixed bag. You get a lot of spray-painting high school posers who scribble (A) symbols in their trapper-keepers, and then there the academic frauds like Chomsky who are little more than conventional anti-neoliberal leftists, but you also have Stirner, Ellul, Zerzan and others who have at least contributed a few interesting ideas that aren't simply borrowed from other corners of the intellectual left-wing.